


Discipline Imposed

by derryderrydown



Series: Discipline (aka, sub!Brad, whut?) [1]
Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Gen, Take Clothes Off As Directed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-22
Updated: 2012-03-22
Packaged: 2017-11-02 09:23:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/367462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/derryderrydown/pseuds/derryderrydown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being a sub is difficult when you're Brad Colbert</p>
            </blockquote>





	Discipline Imposed

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Take Clothes Off As Directed](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/7408) by Helenish. 



> I blame it all on [surexit](http://archiveofourown.org/users/surexit).

On Brad's third day at military academy, Harris, his company's drill instructor sits him down and says, "Tops impose discipline on themselves. Subs need it imposed from outside."

Brad frowns as he considers it.

"You," Harris says, "need strong discipline, and your junior high top sure as hell hasn't cut it."

Brad opens his mouth to defend Julia, but Harris talks over him.

"If she had, you wouldn't be here, and you wouldn't be interrupting me. Six strokes."

"Yes, sir," Brad says sullenly. On his first day, he picked up four strokes. Yesterday, it was ten. Harris' six has brought today's up to fourteen, and he's going to be sleeping on his stomach again tonight.

"There's a chance you'll find the top you need," Harris says, "but it's a slim chance. You're more likely to waste your life." Harris leans forward. "I don't want to see that happen."

Brad's confused.

"The Marines can be your top." Harris settles back in his chair again. "Think about it, Colbert. Dismissed."

The punishments for breaking the rules are harsh. The only reward for following them is acceptance.

As the weeks pass, Brad finds himself following the rules more often than not, finding a comfort in the set boundaries of what is and isn't allowed. He starts to think that Harris was right, that the only way he can avoid wasting his life is to sign up with the Marine Corps as his top.

He mentions it to his parents over winter break, and they look concerned but don't say anything other than, "It won't be an easy life for a sub."

While he's home, he breaks the rules. He encourages Julia to break the rules. They fuck in Brad's old treehouse, and he gets splinters in his ass. Julia laughs at him, and spends half an hour peering at his ass, pulling out all the splinters.

He thinks he could be happy with Julia. He thinks he could let her impose discipline on him, if she tried, but she doesn't.

He goes back to the Academy with a piece of her red embroidery thread tied round his neck, and he's caned every night for a week before he cuts it off.

"She is not your top," Harris tells him, after he's cut it off. "The Academy is your top."

Once Brad's settled back into following the rules, it's easy. He likes it, and he doesn't want to lose that discipline, so he asks Harris if he can stay at the Academy over spring break.

Harris agrees, and Brad spends the break pushing himself further, harder, and he breaks the Academy record for the assault course.

He gets letters from Julia, and he gives them, unopened, to Harris.

He finishes the year at the top of nearly all his classes, and he's looking forward to being a corporal when he returns.

That's what keeps him behaving - just - over summer. It's a long time with no discipline, and he stops his 6am runs, lets Julia feed him tequila, throws up over his parents' lawn. But he doesn't steal any cars, doesn't get into any fights, doesn't go into any bars. It's behaving, by last summer's standards.

When he goes back to the Academy in the fall, he isn't made a corporal. He considers complaining to Harris, because on academics and physical and military, he _should_ have been a corporal.

But he looks at himself, at the way his body's softened and his mind's shed the information he'd so carefully acquired, and he's not fit to be a corporal.

Over winter break, he keeps up his training. It's easy over spring break, because Julia's away with her parents, but he's dreading summer. He tells Harris, and Harris promises to phone him every couple of weeks.

It works, and Brad arrives back at the Academy for his junior year in better shape than he'd left.

He still isn't made corporal.

This time, he speaks to Harris about it, and Harris stares at him. "A corporal has to impose discipline," Harris finally says, gently, as though it should be perfectly obvious. "Impose discipline on _tops_. You can't even impose discipline on yourself."

When it's put into those terms, it seems obvious, and Brad resigns himself to a career as a PFC, because he can't see any future that doesn't involve the Marine Corps.

A week later, he goes back to speak to Harris. "But the corporal isn't imposing the discipline," he says. "The Academy is. The corporal's just a conduit through which the Academy operates."

Harris frowns thoughtfully. "Let me speak to the colonel," he says.

At the start of the spring semester, Brad's made corporal.

He phones his parents, bursting with pride, and they don't understand just what it means to be the first sub corporal at the Academy, but they're happy for him anyway.

It isn't easy. Brad pushes himself harder than he ever has, because he can't pass on the Academy's discipline if he doesn't embrace it himself. He makes the varsity shooting team, the National Honor Society, the drill team and color guard, even heads up the Chess Club, and he heads home for the summer with every hope of being made sergeant for his senior year.

Julia climbs in his bedroom window at 1am. "We're going to a party," she says. "Come on."

And she has that casual expectation that of _course_ he'll obey, because he always does, and he's halfway out of bed when he thinks about being a conduit for the Academy's discipline.

"I can't," he says, and sits back down.

He wants to. Oh, _god_ , does he want to, because Julia's got tequila on her breath, and she's moving loose and easy, and he wants her to ride him, but he stares at his Academy uniform, hanging on the back of his bedroom door, and imagines the sergeant's stripes on the sleeves, and _Julia is not his top_.

Julia sighs, sits on the bed next to him, and strokes his bare thigh. "I miss you," she says. "They've brainwashed you at that place."

"They've imposed discipline on me," he says, and glances sideways at her. "You never did." He doesn't mean it to sound accusatory, but it does.

"We're _teenagers_ ," she says. "We're not supposed to be disciplined." She pulls a face, mocking the word 'disciplined' as she says it, and Brad frowns.

"I need discipline."

"You don't," Julia says. "You need to stop holding yourself to impossible standards."

"They aren't impossible," Brad says stubbornly. "The Academy tells me they're possible, and the Academy is my top."

"Fuck," Julia says, and pulls away. "They really have brainwashed you."

After she's climbed back out the window, Brad curls up in his bed, and tries not to fall apart.

He makes sergeant, though.


End file.
